as long as the theory of evolution is discussed.
Wallace was awarded the first Darwin medal of the Royal Society in 1890; he had received the royal medal in 1868. He held the honorary degrees of LL.D. of Dublin University (1882) and D.C.L. of Oxford (1889). The order of merit was bestowed on him in 1910.
Wallace was the author of the following works, besides numerous scientific papers: Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro (1853), Palm Trees of the Amazon (1853), The Malay Archipelago (1869), Natural Selection (1870), On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism (1875, new edition 1896), The Geographical Distribution of Animals (1876), Tropical Nature (1878), Island Life (1880), Land Nationalization (1882), Bad Times (1885), Darwinism (1889), Vaccination, a Delusion (1898), The Wonderful Century (1898, new edition 1903), Studies, Scientific and Social (1900), Man's Place in the Universe (1903), My Life, an Autobiography (1905), Is Mars Habitable? (1907), The World of Life (1910), and Social Environment and Moral Progress (1912).
[Wallace's My Life; Introduction (by G. T. Bettany) to Wallace's Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, 1889; Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol. xcv, B, 1923–1924 (with portrait).]
WALLACE, Sir DONALD MACKENZIE (1841–1919), newspaper correspondent, editor, and author, the son of Robert Wallace, of Boghead, Dumbartonshire, by his wife, Sarah, daughter of Donald Mackenzie, was born 11 November 1841. He lost both his parents before he was ten years old, and about the age of fifteen, having a sufficiency of private means, he conceived, in his own words, ‘a passionate love of study, and determined to devote my life to it’. Accordingly, he spent all the years of his early manhood, until he was twenty-eight, in continuous study at various universities; about half the time at Glasgow and Edinburgh, where he was occupied mainly with metaphysics and ethics; the remainder at the École de Droit, Paris, and at the universities of Berlin and Heidelberg, where he applied himself particularly to Roman law and modern jurisprudence, taking the degree of doctor of laws at Heidelberg in 1867. During the vacations he travelled extensively over the continent of Europe, acquiring fluency in its principal languages.
While he was engaged in qualifying himself in Germany for a professorship of comparative law, Wallace accepted a private invitation to visit Russia, as he had a strong desire to study the Ossetes, a peculiar Aryan tribe in the Caucasus, with exceptionally primitive institutions. He remained in Russia nearly six years, from early in 1870 till late in 1875, studying, not the Ossetes, but the Russians themselves, whom he found much better worth attention. He familiarized himself thoroughly with the life of the people, not merely visiting the great towns and the show places, but settling for a considerable period in a remote country village; and in 1876 he came back to England with the material which he utilized in his famous work on Russia, published in two volumes in the beginning of 1877, just before the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War. The book had a great and instant success, went through several editions, and was translated into many languages, the French translation being ‘crowned’ by the Academy. It was twice revised by its author, in 1905 and in 1912, and remains the standard authority on Russia before the revolution of 1917.
Wallace now entered active life as a foreign correspondent of The Times, which he represented at St. Petersburg in 1877–1878; at the Berlin Congress in June and July 1878, where he assisted M. de Blowitz, the famous Paris correspondent of The Times; and afterwards for six years at Constantinople (1878–1884). From that point of vantage he was able to investigate the Balkan peoples and their problems; and thence he went on behalf of The Times, after the battle of Tel-el-Kebir (September 1882), on a special mission to Egypt, the outcome being his book, Egypt and the Egyptian Question (1883). In 1884 the Earl of Dufferin, who, as British ambassador at Constantinople, had learnt to appreciate Wallace's unusual attainments, tact, and discretion, took him to India as his private secretary during his viceroyalty, and testified at its close in 1888 to the ‘incomparable’ nature of his assistance, which was rewarded by the K.C.I.E. in 1887. After a further period of travel in the Near and Middle East, Wallace was selected to accompany, as political officer, the Tsarewitch, afterwards the ill-fated Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, in his Indian tour during the winter of 1890–1891. Then he returned to the service of The Times, as director of its foreign department, a new post, in which for eight years his powers of organization, calm judgement, and encyclopaedic knowledge found congenial scope. That knowledge was utilized in 1899 in another direction, when The Times took over the
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